I had to laugh at Labour List MP Carmel Sepuloni trying to insist on Breakfast TV that it had been a great week for Phil Goff. It was like a finance company spokesperson trying to insist they were sound.

Where do I start. First the Herald reveals that Phil Goff did not tell them the sob story he fed to them, owned a total of three properties, and it was not the case of someone with no assets being forced out of their family home. It was just a case of someone being unwilling to sell their property investments for a loss. I hope this story appears in as prominent place in the print edition as yesterday’s story.

Labour’s ill-judged foray into the benefit policy debate – offering the dole to anyone who losses their job regardless of their spouse’s income – is a strategic blunder which ignores these basic facts of political life….

Labour now claims it isn’t going to allow the dole to be paid to anyone, regardless of income. But that’s a back down because that is exactly what they were saying on Monday.

You could sense the desperation on Monday after the story was broken in the Herald. Goff had clearly blurted out the story too early because Labour party officials and MPs were scrambling to fill in the details as other media worked to follow up the story.

On Tuesday Goff was desperately trying to claim that he was talking about the principle of middle income people not missing out on welfare and not the details. All the more reason then for not announcing the plan until the details are worked through.

Guyon makes it fairly clear Goff personally blundered by making policy up on the hoof. Guyon also covers their banking inquiry:

I see Labour is having another go. Having failed to win a proper select committee inquiry into whether the banks’ interest rates are too high, they are teaming up with the Greens and Jim Anderton to hold their own “inquiry” – one with no standing, no authority and no power.

Essentially they’ll be sitting in a room, preaching to the converted. Looks like a gimmick to me. Looks like Labour hasn’t fully realised it was turfed out of power.

This has been an especially awful week for Phil Goff. It is not just that the Labour leader has made two blunders – the first being a policy mishap and the second being caught out by failing to reveal pertinent information. It is that a pattern of bad judgment calls is starting to emerge. That will be causing his colleagues some serious concern.

The problem for his colleagues is the lack of options. After 2011 there will be options, but there are not yet.

Twice within the past two months, Goff has sought to cause National discomfort only to end up pinging himself by failing to disclose facts which ended up being revealed by his opponents to his embarrassment.

The first example was Neelam Choudary, the Indian woman who alleged former minister Richard Worth sexually harassed her. She turned out to be a Labour Party activist.

The latest example is a Helensville man, Bruce Burgess, who seemed the perfect example of the kind of middle-class distress Goff had been talking about when he floated a shift in Labour policy so the dole would be paid to redundant workers for up to a year regardless of the income of their partners.

There is a warning in Armstrong’s writing. Having twice sat on highly relevant information, the gallery is going to be far more suspicious of any information from Goff in future. His effectiveness will be reduced due to this.

Goff is kidding only himself if he thinks this new information would not change people’s perceptions of Mr Burgess’s predicament.

Labour knew Mr Burgess owned the properties. It should have dropped his case immediately it knew that. However, presumably Goff was blinded by Mr Burgess being one of John Key’s constituents. The Prime Minister had done nothing to help him. Goff could see the headlines before they appeared. Through his own fault, they have ended up being the wrong ones.

The information totally changed people’s perceptions. Just as Choudary’s identity did also. I actually felt a bit guilty, at the time, for blogging yesterday on the Burgesses as I felt sorry for them being on the verge of losing their only home. While still sympathetic they are in tough times, the fact they have two other properties means they do have options – far better options than most families.

If he fails to win in 2011, Goff knows his party will look for someone else to lead them into the next election. If he keeps performing in the fashion displayed this week his colleagues might start asking themselves whether they should not look elsewhere before then.

I think Goff is safe until 2011, again due to the lack of alternatives.

Labour’s also attacking the appointment of former National leader Don Brash to the new productivity taskforce, calling him a stalking horse for privatisation. Goff says it will lead to a renewal of ideas soundly rejected at the 2005 election.

Actually, as Key pointed out in the House yesterday, National wasn’t “soundly rejected” at the 05 election – it only lost by the narrowest of margins. And it was probably the Exclusive Brethren that spooked voters more than National’s privatisation agenda.

Indeed. Mps who call Don “Lord Voldemort” may want to reflect on the fact he got only 2% less than Helen Clark in 2005, and that their references to him as such actually alienate a large segment of the population. Anyway back to Goff:

Goff had another terrible day in Parliament today after the case of poor old Bruce Burgess, a constituent in John Key’s electorate no less, who having worked hard all his life now couldn’t get any assistance from the state after losing his job.

Labour shopped the story to the Herald this morning, which ran it without question. Trouble was, poor old Bruce owns two rental properties besides his lifestyle block in a leafy part of Helensville – in other words, he has assets of at least a million dollars. Now, that doesn’t mean he isn’t suffering, but that wasn’t the picture presented to the public by Goff or the Herald this morning.

Also, according to the Government, Bruce is eligible for $92 a week state assistance – something that wasn’t pointed out earlier either.

Once again, an issue that should have run in Labour’s favour ended up backfiring badly.

So this is what Carmel Sepuloni calls a great week for Phil Goff. I’d love to see what she calls a bad week.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under NZ Politics.
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“I think Goff is safe until 2011, again due to the lack of alternatives.”

Maybe he is safe, but it would be a mistake not to deal with this sooner. Like, very soon. Until 2001 Labour are supposed to be the main opposition party. They have to wake up to the fact that they are holding the gun back to front. Those holding the gun, and supplying the ammunition, need to either change completely (looking less and less likely) or to step aside and allow a major revamp. Their responsibility now is to be an effective opposition. And to prepare for next time they become government. It could be a long preparation.

The couple bought the Papakura and town house properties in either 2004/05 for $640,000. There has been an enormous escalation since then in AK values, and even the current downturn should have left the prices way above the initial investment. Anyone know what the current values are likely to be?

Also, get this from the Herald:

“Mr Burgess volunteered the fact he had reasonably recently purchased rental property, but said the rent was only paying off the interest, indicating this provided no significant capital asset. He said the rent was not covering costs.”

So he’s able to meet his commitments to the bank. What he’s really grizzling about is he can no longer deduct his maintenance costs against a more significant salary.

Like the Choudary and Korean womans’ cases, this looks like a “Never Ending Story”.. the childrens fantasy story of 20 years ago.

Carmel Sepuloni looked totally clueless and totally outdone by Simon Bridges. Missed the point that this gentleman took extreme risks when borrowing large sums of money to invest in property and has the temerity to ask the taxpayer to bail him out when it all goes sour. Had he been less grandiose and invested in shares, he would still own his house. Sure, his portfolio would have lost value, but he would not be ruined. Should the taxpayer be there to bail out people who gambled on property values. I would have more sympathy for people who tried to own and run businesses that employed people and increased productivity and taxable corporate profits.

So Labour would tax low income workers in order to pay benefits to millionaire property investors so that those investors wouldn’t have to flog a few properties when they make bad investment decisions?

I can’t even begin to imagine the fuss that the Left would kick up if ACT, George Bush, or Don Brash had enacted a Property Investors Asset Protection Act paid for by taxes on low income workers (or, via borrowing, the children of those low income workers).

“I think Goff is safe until 2011, again due to the lack of alternatives.”

Well, nobody seems to have told Cunners who, hard on the heels of Key’s comment, proudly announced on Radio Pinko this morning that “… there are no pixies at the bottom of the garden… ”

Clearly the Key style has struck a chord with our Cunners.

So, does this mean that the copycat commenting is the start of Cunners’ big push with Jones in low profile mode and those wimin sidelined with the political correctness backlash? And what happened to those bloody pixies anyway? They seemed to be perking away for nine years whilst Cunners was strutting his stuff as the person “in charge around here”. When did he notice they had gone? November 2008? When he was bagging the tax cuts? Or after Philin started serious dating with Mr Fuckup. And where did they go?

Cunners will have all the answers as the measured voice of confidence-inspiring reason. “Steady as she goes troops; look to my lead”. Such a safe pair of hands. But can he out Key Key?

Can we put to bed this comment about Goff being a nice person.. he has been complicit in every recent piece of muck raking by the Labour propaganda machine. It is such a delicious turn of events that the scales are now falling from the eyes of his adoring media scrum.
They are finally starting to realise who the real Goff actually is. Actually, come to think of it, he is not that dissimilar from those around him.. King, Hodgson, Mallard, Cunliffe etc.

… er Phil, those “elite” that you refer to; do you mean the people that WORK for aliving to PAY tax ???

And what do you tell families working double shifts to support themselves Phil? That you would love to have a job, but unfortunately you have been burdened with the tasks of being the national Magpie and the lone blogger at the end of the corridor or whatever??

“Goff needs to get back to doing what he does best – instructing builders in Wainui about home insulation.”

I would not have thought he is qualified to instruct real workers on anything, to the best of my limited knowledge, the closest goff has come to “real” work was a school holiday job in the fellmongery at a freezing works, to earn some pocket money.
It is a pretty precipitous argument to call being a career politician a “real” job.

Ha ha you are probably correct banana.
Some of our builders do not understand the complexities of the social need to be warm & just require direction, and who wiser than goff to provide it.
Perhaps he could set up an unofficial inquiry into the need to upskill builders.

As a grizzled old Mike Moore type Labour bloke I’m bloody disappointed in Goff,
first rule in politics, check and double check the so called facts you are putting out.
And for pities sake Phil grab some real bloody workers to be MPs, no more bloody lecturers or bloody lawyers.
Have a look at the makeup of the people who vote for you and make bloody sure they are comfortable with the people you have as MPs.

grumpy.. I fell out of love with the labour party 2 elections ago, but only refused to vote for them last election.
the antics of the lecturers & lawyers, combined with the their facile alliance with the greens & their pathetic policies put me right off.

Grumpy, there was a do-co on the other night about the first socialist commune (village) set up in the US. Apparently it was a huge hit with academics and lawyers and such, they were asked to join as their benefits to society were deemed essential. Of course all wealth and produce was to be “shared” according to ones needs. It was going great till they figured out they had forgotten to invite people who would actually work, seems the poor bastards nearly starved as they spent all day talking about what rules their society would live under. Seems to me not that much has changed , has it?.

Why isn’t anyone slaying the reporting of these Goofs? It’s extremely lazy & irresponsible journalism. Actually it’s not even journalism. You’ve been fed stories from an opposition party no less and you go ahead and run them big without asking some basic questions? WTF?

Following up later with “The Herald has now discovered…” doesn’t count. You’ve already shown a lack of any critical thinking/questioning.

These questions should have been asked up front! And you can’t say it’s the benefit of hindsight either. We’re talking journalism 101. Otherwise just print all political party press releases word for word and be done with it.

Do they have a journalism school or basic journalism courses in New Zealand? Has any one from the Herald been to one?

Some of the theory of commune/communism is ok, but bob’s example and just about every other one (how many communes and communist states are still operating?) shows that it simply doesn’t work in practice. It can be hard enough with just two people together in a home commune (relationship).

The the other hand capitalism may be able to hang together better but in it’s purest forms it has serious deficiencies as well.